Testing an Aquatic Terrarium From Menards

What a beautiful evening. It's like 70. A little bit of crispness in the air. That nice fall fresh feeling. It's nice to sit out. It is evening though and I'm in the process of just taking it all down and putting it all back together. So things are a bit of a mess. Don't don't worry about it. Look, I made up a nice little corner so we could do this video out here. I mean, you know, it's not perfect, but hey, whatever. I have this water plants create your own lush soothing aquacape calming peaceful and relaxing unique gardening kit. Ain't it cool? Oh yeah. Hey, what's up garden friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? Hope you're doing well. I'm great. I keep sneezing. Oh gosh, my allergies. I picked this up at Menard's and I think it was like 12 or $14. They had a few of these different kits and I thought this would be a fun thing to do in a video. just put it together, see what's going on in the inside because the holidays are coming up and it might be something that might make a nice gift for people. So, here we are. I know why the other kit came with this. I did one also that's a moss bowl. I don't know if that video will be out before after this one, but uh the fish one. I'm not really sure fish just plant bowl. One rock. One little rock in this bag. Oh, hey, just in case you can't find a rock, then there you go. Hemianths keatrices. H, that sounds familiar. Miniature water jade. Now, that doesn't sound familiar. Uh, planting depth, seed spacing, germination time, growing and care. Put gravel in shell container. Fills deep coordinated water just the top of gravel. Sprinkle seeds on top so they're not totally submerged. Cover container with plastic wrap or misfated water daily. Ah, water bottle. Place container in bright indirect light prefers temperatures of 75 to 80° to sprout. Do you keep your house between 75 and 80°? I don't absolutely not. No way. But could float this in a tray in the fish tank to get them to sprout. They can flourish in a range of 64 to 82°. Okay. All right. Well, missed that part. Would prefer it warmer though. It sounds like to germinate plants will form a dense mat on the bottom of the container. Fill container with water 2 weeks after seed sprout once they have anchored to what they are on. They can grow in the bottom or as a floating mat. Miniature water jade is a very popular aquacape plant in outdoor ponds and aquariums. Uhhuh. Smallest water plants in the world. Plants remove nitrates. That's true. All of them do. It's the ones that aren't parasitic or carnivorous. They help prevent the development of algae. Uhhuh. given though we had special place to hide six. Okay, got it. Feel like I hung on to that for way too long. That was the directions on the back of the seeds for the kit here. Anything else we need to know? This what it says. It includes contents. Glass terrarium with three LED light cork batteries are included. A Mr. River gravel and an accent stone. And then the seeds, the water jade seeds. Fine. Instructions. Pop these open. Give them a read and then come back. All right. So, what this is saying here is to put just a small layer of this gravel in the bottom. Go ahead and put it all in there. Fill it up to where the water is just the very top of the gravel and then sprinkle the seeds on top. Place the cork back on top. This has a cork stopper with a little LED light in it. Place it in indirect light someplace preferably warm. Uh we already talked about that. And the seeds should germinate in 7 to 15 days. Sounds easy enough. It also talked about using decorinated or distilled water because well truth is and what it says in there is all plants prefer decorated or water that doesn't have your sanitizing chemicals in it. It's never been an issue for me. But uh may as well start this off on the right foot. So I will use reverse osmosis water because I already have that in the house. It's easy for me to use that. Pull it right out of the filter. This is the cork stopper on top. And that is the LED light and pop it out of here. It should have batteries in it. It you just unscrew it. And there's a piece of paper in there to separate the batteries from the other contact. Pop that back on the inside and then just, you know, do the thing. Screw this back on and it should turn on. That'll go right up there. put the LED light into it that makes it easier to turn. So, turn it to the left, easier this with two hands, but that will turn it off. Turn it to the right and that'll turn it on. So, it's something I can go ahead and just say right off the bat. I have another one of these kits, but it's for moss. I tried it and I don't, like I said, I don't know when that video is going to be out. May have been out already, but the battery only lasted 3 days in here. I didn't leave it on 24 hours. I've turned on when I woke up and then turned it back off, you know, around 12 hours later cuz that's about how long you would want your lights to be on. 8 to 12 hours. Uh, so I don't know. It's neat and everything, but I really think it's more of an accent. You want to put this someplace in the moss someplace that's brightly lit, but don't want direct light going in there. That can be very bad. It'll get really hot. And since this one does have water in it, that can do things where it can actually burn the house. So, you be careful. Why would you need that much gravel? Seems excessive, but I guess not. I'm going to rinse this and dump it out. Rinse it and dump it out till it's nice and clean and then get the seeds into it. And I guess that'll be it until they sprout. There were separate directions on what to do with this rock. I haven't read them yet. So, I'd refer to the next page. Create your own plant covered accent stone. Plant the terrariums outlined on the prior page. This is an alternate method of planting the seeds. Put a small amount of decorated water in separate small container. Okay. Sprinkle seeds in water. They'll start to develop gelatinous coating and corn together. Let the seeds sit in the water for about 4 hours. Rinse and accent stone. Roll it in the small seeds and the seeds will stick to it. Place the covered stone on moist gravel in the terrarium. Oh, okay. So, that's not about keeping it submerged. It's about just growing the plants on the rock. Got it. All right. I've got this set up with the, you know, gravel on the bottom. Look at that. These are some tiny seeds. That's why they want you to put them in your hands typically and shake them off from your hands. Wow. Oh, those are little. Okay, that took a minute. And there's still some left in there. A wax pack would be better, I think, for this because they wouldn't stick so much. Wouldn't be as much static clean. There we go. That's done. I can go ahead and try and get the rest of these out. But they're really, really clinging to the inside there. But I'll mess with that later. I'm going to put the lid on this and set it someplace for a couple of weeks where it'll be nice and warm, but not too hot and get indirect light. And we'll see if they pop open, if they start to germinate. Did things look different? They should. It's been about almost 5 weeks since I filmed the last video. Here it is. Look at it. Wow, look at all that growth. How amazing. Now, I have a lot to say about this, actually. So, for starters, I had to reseed this. The seeds I initially put in there are about 3 weeks. Nothing happened. So, I took the rest of that packet, dumped it in there, and uh as of I think yesterday, so 2 weeks later from that, there's some germination, not very much. You can just barely see them in there. That's only a few. I would personally be propagating something like this on a much finer gravel, but just it technically worked. I'd have to say don't buy it because well, this was stupid. There are other options that I think would be better unless you just like the jar and you can get it on sale. I was just at Menard's yesterday and it was on sale for like 13 bucks, I think. Something like that. Might have been 16. Uh, the light is pointless. Here's the light up here. Well, you already know, right? That was in the beginning of the video, I think. I can't remember. It's been 5 weeks. It doesn't have very long life. I got about 3 days out of this thing. I ran it for 12 hours, which is typical if you're using something as a growite. Anywhere from 8 to even 16 hours. I keep all mine out here on for about 12 hours for the plants. 3 days was all I got out of it. By the fourth day, no more power. And I think it's a disadvantage that you had to remember to turn it on and off. Something with a timer, which I that's really not asking much. $4 fairy lights from Walmart usually have an onoff timer. Just whatever time you turn them on, they'll turn off 6 hours later and they'll turn on that same time the next day. It's doable. This light, I think, is more for decorative purposes to make it look cool. I suppose you don't want to put these things in the sun, right? Cuz one, it's going to get really hot in here. too. The way the light moves through spherical glass, it can burn your house down. That's no good. Nobody wants that to happen. So, I just I just the light up there. It's It serves no purpose. I moved this in a different one, which is over here. I don't know if that video will have been out or not. It probably came out before this one. under my grow lights after about a week because these batteries died after 3 days and then they sat in the dark for about maybe two days because I was gone that weekend. Um, and I was like, "Oh, I'll do that." And then I forgot. I left for the weekend, came home, went, "Oh, shoot. I was supposed to do that." So, they did have 2 days without light, which I don't think mattered for the moss. and they were getting some ambient light just like you would get if you had these things sitting in your window sill off to the side, right? It was a south facing window. So, it was a nice bright area where I have other plants growing. Uh what's over there right now? Well, I had a fern over there and what was it? What's in the grow space now? But there was a fern there. It was doing very, very well. And I don't know, it's my garden window in my house. If you watch my videos, you know there's a lot of plants in there for some reason. I don't remember what off the top of my head. There's some other glass terrariums, uh, some orchids. The plants grow there, but these things, uh-uh, no, it wasn't happening. And I needed the counter space back to decorate for the holidays. So, I took these both and put them underneath the grow lights where I have cactus and succulents growing. And uh, well, this is that's all we got is just just this little guy, which is I mean, pretty dang cute. That little sprout. You can see it looks like there was another sprout there that dampened off. I see what? One, two, three. How many do you all see? There might be more than that. It's fine. I mean, not really. This thing costs money. You have options, though. If you were disappointed by this, then you could always just grab a plant from your local pet store to put in there, I suppose. Uh, an Anubius nana would probably do well in there. Don't bury it in the soil. Put it onto a stick or something like that. they don't like to have the roots covered. Uh maybe a tiny little like micro fern would do well. You have options, but these are all things that you could do by just, you know, grabbing a mason jar or a floral bowl. This is it. I don't know. It didn't work. Just drop some chia seeds in there. It would no longer be an aquatic type planter, but at least something would grow. Yeah, it's dumb. I wouldn't buy it personally, but except that Well, I did, but maybe you shouldn't. Right. I don't know. Like I said, if you just want the cute little jar and you're okay with doing different things with it if it doesn't work out, then hey, there's nothing wrong with it. A warmer environment would probably help. Although, it's been pretty warm out here in this grow space. I mean, there are days where it's 84°, which is pretty dang good for germination. These are on the lower shelves, so they weren't getting quite as much warmth. I have sensors on all those shelves. My cool temperature on that shelf has been like 67. This is between 67 and 77 on the succulent rack. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Just we're just going to call it a fail. It's cute, but it's a failure. And also just logistically, if you were to have an aquatic plant terrarium, the majority of aquatic plants are going to want some kind of nutrient. It's not like this other one that I've done over here that has moss in it, right? They can photosynthesize as long as things are nice and moist. They'll be okay. That's not a moss. That's a lyken. But the rest of it's moss. Now, aquatic plants, especially the ones where you expect them to root down, you need some kind of plant food for them. Not yet. These are still seedlings. You'd want for them to start to set up some mature growth before even messing with any types of fertilizers. It just doesn't make sense in something this small. Does that make any sense? Maybe if you were doing something like I had mentioned with more of an epithetic aquatic plant, then that would be fine. Epipites don't need all the stuff down around their roots. Aquatic plants, I think it would be best to have something large enough where you can put a tiny little piece of fertilizer down with the roots. uh maybe uh various substrates that are bit more fine perhaps, but anytime you do that, you also are going to have algae growth and you have to really balance things out. Anything aquatic is going to be more complicated, right? So, it just felt like a long shot to me for this to even be successful to begin with. Even if there was great germination rates with the seeds, they were going to need a lot of light to get by to photosynthesize and become nice and full of plants without any type of nutrient being added into it. Like a lot of light. Aquatic plants, this is I'm speaking very broadly here, but typically aquatic plants, if you don't have some sort of nutrient for them, need to be injecting CO2 into the water or have them in a greenhouse, something with really, really, really nice bright lights. And that's a very broad statement, right? There are plenty of aquatic plants where that's not the case. Plenty of crypts and the various ferns. Anubius, typically you don't need that. I already mentioned the Anubius. I don't know much about this one specifically, but I also don't know the Latin names for the majority of the aquatic plants either. I know like you know the different horn warts and some elodas and things like that and nubius already goes by its name and blah and things like that the Amazon but those aren't applicable to this situation here. I've done aquatic plant terrariums. I don't think I ever filmed it. I should have really really big vase with multiple wares, different types of substrate and I had guppy grass in it and that stuff just flourished and there were just a few little endlers live bears in it. It held about I was like four and a half five gallons. It was a decent size but it was mostly snails and shrimp right or no I had a couple little rice fish in it. I don't remember but it lasted for a few years. Didn't have to do much with it. Had to prune back the plants and everything. It got a lot of light. There was a substrate layer that was meant for plant growth. Even though that they were free floating plants, it's still it gets the nutrients in there for the plants. And then you have other living things in there to help have an actual terrarium, a little ecosystem. I'm going to keep it going. We'll see what happens when these put on some more mature growth. I'll slowly start adding in some more water. I will say I think the reason it went wrong the first time was because I think I had just a smidge bit too much water in there for them. I think that probably had something to do with it. So, when I went for the second round, I dumped a little bit of the water out. So, basically, the rocks were just moist. You couldn't even see the layer of water in there. Like, when I would turn it, you you can kind of see sort of. Can you see? You do know what I'm talking about. You see the water moving around in there? Well, that's the point, though. It's hard to see because there's just not that much. It's enough to keep things nice and moist for germination, but not enough to keep the plants submerged. Okay. Hey, that's all. I think it's dumb and a waste of money, but might be something that you really like the idea of. you want to give a shot, go ahead and give it a try. There are better pre-made terrarium options out there. I know Proven Winners has their line of these terraforms. This is one is the ones they're doing for the holidays, the Leaf Joy situation, but typically you would buy these. They don't have these things on them. I don't know what the normal cost is. This was 35. Maybe they mark it up for the holidays. I'm not sure. $34.98. Big glass jar and plants that are more appropriate and suited for a terrarium. I know it's not aquatic, but you could just, you know, go get a jar, put some sand and some gravel and get a tiny little bit of fertilizer tab, stick it underneath the soil by the plant roots, whatever plant you buy, and boom, you've got yourself an aquatic terrarium. Probably cost you more than 16 bucks or however much this was, though. But you get a lot more for it and you can have some fun. You can throw some snails and things in there. If you have a local creek that you can go by, you can get down in there, not close to shore, try and get into the creek and you can scoop up just a little bit of sediment and drop it in there and just watch the jar come to life. All kinds of things start to happen. Oh, and I should mention most importantly when talking about plant selection, the reason that this plant sounded familiar was because it's the baby tears, which is a really really popular aquatic plant, but they're not known for being something that you can grow very easily. In fact, often times they don't look that great unless, well, you're really good at what you're doing and balancing your nutrient levels by having compartmental fish. Usually people need to have bright white and CO2 to get baby tears to look good. I've never ever seen them referred to as baby water jade. The only time I've ever heard of a plant referred to as a water jade or a baby water jade, which I'm referring to a busandra, which would also be an even better plant to put in something like this, right? But not likely to be something you're going to be able to buy the seeds of. baby tears you can get the seeds of because well you can grow them as an aquatic or you can grow them in a pot and they're very cute to have around in a terrarium or something like that. I think that that would have been something that would make more sense would be to sell it as a just some soil and you dump it in there and boom, you have a little terrarium full of baby tears but not an aquatic terrarium, right? It's just my opinion based on my experience with baby tears, but that's probably one of the last aquatic plants I would recommend for a terrarium for an aquatic style terrarium, especially if it's in a kit and it's meant for children potentially. You know, I don't know. I just it seems like a catch grab gimmick to be honest. It's hard to imagine that anybody who knew what they were doing or knows anything about the plants, aquatic plants in general, would be like, "Oh yeah, that's a good idea. That's going to go really well for everybody. The germination maybe, maybe that part would go really well had I not put too much water in there to begin with. Maybe I would have had much better germination and be able to keep them growing really nice like this with just a little bit of water in there. Once you fill this up with water, everything changes. Once they're submerged, you have a whole different situation going on. And that's another process to keep in mind when it comes to aquatic plants. So, if you ever been to the pet store where you see the plants that are in the tubes with the gel on the bottom, those plants are going to have some die off when you go ahead and introduce them to an aquatic environment because they've been growing up out of the water, which is common. That's one of the faster ways to produce them. They grow faster out of the water. But then you submerge them and they'll usually drop all if not many to most of the leaves that they had when they were above the water. The baby tears are going to do the same thing. and they're not a versatile enough plant to be like, "Oh, let me just come back to life without some help, which you would need something like CO2 to do. This is a small enough container that I suppose it'd be pretty easy to dose it with fertil." Actually, no, I don't think that's true at all. Never mind. I take that all back. You could very easily put way too much fertilizer in something like this. And then you have algae problems, all kind. No, it's just you shouldn't have to do all that anyways. It's a kit. kits are supposed to make some sort of sense, yet they rarely do, which is why I think they're fun to buy so that I can put them together and just rip on them what I'm doing. Now, there it is. Hey, comment down below. What are your thoughts on it? I'm sure your thoughts are probably pretty similar to mine, which is that this was dumb. Lots of options out there that just would have made a lot more sense. Like I said, I'm going to keep it going and we'll see what it does. So, watch out in the vlogs and things like that. Throughout the winter, I do little tours about monthly of what's going on with the plants. And I'll try and remember when I'm going through the shelves to talk about what, if anything, is going on with these [Music]